1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field computer graphics, and more particularly, to a system and method for communicating graphic data through a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer networks permit the distribution of computational labor across a number of computers. One computer (a server) may be configured to provide computational services to other computers (clients). In particular, a server may be specially configured to store and maintain graphics data such as scene graphs for clients. A client may send requests for graphics data to the server. The server may receive the requests and send back the requested graphics data through the network. Since the graphics data (e.g., a portion of a scene graph) may be voluminous and complex, the client may need to be well endowed with resources such as a powerful host processor, a powerful graphics accelerator and high network access bandwidth in order to render and display the graphics data with a latency that is acceptable to the user. Unfortunately, many computer system are not so well endowed. There exists a need for a system and methodology of serving graphics data (especially scene graph data) to clients with a wide variety of processing and rendering capabilities.